PC games not in fullscreen in Windows 10

@BossDweeb:

I think you have misunderstood the main issue.

This could be because the games you use were designed for the desktop resolution you use,

or possibly you have some special graphics card/drivers that behave differently from the majority.

Most people here are NOT complaining about the black bars caused by image aspect ratio differing from the physical aspect ratio of the monitor. While it is possible to scale such images too by stretching aspect ratio to fill the entire screen, this is NOT what most of us want, as it would distort the images.

The real issue most of us have with Win10 is twofold:

1: When a game is set to go fullscreen in a specific resolution, Win10 refuses to do it, and instead goes fullscreen using the full desktop resolution.

2: When in a fullscreen mode with resolution mode enforced by Win10 to something other than what the game was designed for, Win10 does not rescale the game's image in any way, which normally means that there will be HUGE black bars on all four sides of the game image.

For example:

If a game 'wants' to switch to fullscreen 640x480 on a Win10 system using 1920x1200, the result will instead be that a 640x480 game image is displayed in the center of an otherwise black screen of 1920x1200. Thus there will be black bars 640 pixels wide at left and right edges of the screen, while the top and bottom have black bars of 360 pixels height each. As a percentage of total screen the game will then be using appx 13%. So appx 87% of the screen is wasted.

For a more proper implementation, there are many possible methods:

1: Obey the resolution switch and display the game in completely full screen (slightly distorted due to differing aspect ratio). This is truly the most correct thing to do, as a machine should ALWAYS obey the commands of its human owner. If we say 640x480, that is what we should get. A computer should not have the option to refuse. (If/when any computer goes sentient I'll amend that statement... :) )

2: Keep desktop resolution but stretch  the game image to full screen (again distorting aspect ratio).

Visually this gives the same result as #1, except that video drivers may have an opportunity to smooth off some pixellation edges in the rescaling.

3:  Keep desktop resolution but stretch the game image with unchanged aspect ratio such as to completely fill either height or width of the screen with minor black borders at two screen edges for cases where game aspect ratio differs from that of the desktop resolution.

Of all cases #3 above will give the most visually pleasing results, which for the same example case would result in a game image rescaled by a factor of 2.5  to 1600x1200 pixels with black bars of 160 pixels at both right and left sides.

Some games actually contain options to use method #3 by requesting such scaling, but even then Win10 ignores it  and defaults to the silly mode with 13% screen usage (eg: "Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri').

Personally I would gladly accept either one of these three  methods, rather than the flat refusal and miniature game images that Win10 forces us to use.

Best regards: Ronald Andersson

[EDIT: May '17 - It looks like MS has returned control of screen scaling to the graphics driver Control Panel

options with the 1703 update.

You can now do as with previous Windows and force full screen when  running games that use a resolution

that is native to a 4:3 aspect ratio, eg- 1024x768. ]

(Not directed at any particular post*)*

Sravan's post (previous page) links to a 'fix' which may be applicable to laptop screens

("1366x768, just change it into 1024x768")~~~~, but it is not actually a fix. 1024x768 just happens to be

a wide screen resolution that also fits within the 1366x768 res monitor.

1366x768 is an 'odd'  size which does not yield an even number when divided by 16 or 9 respectively.

Games using a 1024x768 will not run full screen on a 24" desktop monitor with an16:9  aspect ratio.

However, a resolution of 1280x720will run full screen on a 24" desktop monitor with an 16:9 aspect ratio

because 1280x720 is also a 'proper' 16:9 resolution.1280x720 is evenly divisible by 16 and 9.

(1280x768 comes close, but runs with small black bars at the sides.)

Games that are limited to resolutions that are native to 4:3 or 5:4 aspect ratios,  eg- 1024x768 - 1280x1024

will not run full screen on Win10 .

The graphics driver software is overridden by Win10, so trying to force full screen via your graphics

drivers Control Panel will not  help.

As I mentioned early in this thread, my understanding is Win10 was designed to be able to

run on all manner of devices - phones, notebooks etc.

Previous versions of Windows had issues when trying to scale to these devices and I believe these 'odd'

resolutions are what MS is attempting to fix by commandeering screen scaling on Win10.

.

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gots the same problem with games and have read this entire post, as well as others, and its quite a shame we have to jump thru hoops in the hopes that 'we' will find the solution to a problem that has already been anticipated, or planned. I'm going with planned. but it is the vacations and bonus' I pay for when I buy a new pc with an upgraded OS, thinking that the old OS was obsolete. had XP for the longest (happy happy happy) and bought a new pc with 8.1, upgraded to 10 later on. game worked fine with XP&8.1. its sad to admit that I have applied the helps here, and more, with no resolution. no doubt the head man is getting one while reading these posts. may he lose his nut, as we scurry about.

I would of liked to give a solution for this. thank you for you attention

I Use this trick for many years on win xp, vista, 7, and 8.1, but it is not applicable on win 10!

unfortunately , it didn't worked on me as well..